Clean Fossil Energy

Despite global efforts to transition away from carbon-emitting energy sources like coal, oil, and natural gas, fossil fuels are projected to lead the global energy mix for the foreseeable future. Until the bridge to renewable energy is crossed, PNNL scientists and engineers are dedicated to reducing the environmental impacts of hydrocarbon production and use, especially emissions—including greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuels—on Earth's atmosphere

From fundamental process understanding to field-scale design and deployment, our researchers deliver advanced capabilities in subsurface science and simulation to enable safe and effective control of subsurface fluid injection and extraction. We also integrate chemistry, materials, and process engineering to develop technologies that more efficiently convert fossil hydrocarbons into power, fuels, and chemicals—all critical to environmentally and economically viable production and use of fossil energy.

Jamey Bower leveraged two summers of chemistry research at PNNL—through the SULI program—into a lead author role. The peer-reviewed journal article in the prestigious Applied Materials and Interfaces shows that potassium-loaded zeolite material was best at adsorbing carbon dioxide under industrial conditions.

Over the last few decades, carbon capture and storage approaches have been developed to capture carbon dioxide and inject it into underground reservoirs. FutureGen 2.0 was a project that aimed to develop these approaches at the industrial scale. Although support for this project ended in 2015, FutureGen 2.0 provided valuable information and tangible results.

Researchers at PNNL have found a better way to test carbon-capturing solvents. They created and validated a computational model that predicts how easily a solvent will flow and how much carbon it will capture. The model offers definitive, accurate predictions about different carbon-capture solvents and it can—in a few hours or days—show the potential capture properties of a solvent.